Buffalo Bills begin trimming roster with five cuts on Sunday
The Buffalo Bills announced they have released five players.
The NFL has changed the way they are asking the Buffalo Bills and the other teams in the league to cut their rosters down to the league-mandated 53 players before the start of the regular season. Last year, most teams were only allowed 80 players (the Bills had 81 due to Christian Wade’s exemption as part of the International Player Pathway Program) and there was just one cut down date to go from 80 players to 53.
This year is different as the NFL has set up three smaller roster cutdowns over the course of the preseason as teams will have to go from 90 to 85 by Tuesday at 4 p.m. The Bills once again have an exemption due to Christian Wade so they will be going from 91 to 86, which is exactly what they did on Sunday.
The Bills announced they have released five players which included three offensive linemen (Syrus Tuitele, Caleb Benenoch, Marquel Harrell), defensive lineman Eli Anoku, and linebacker Mike Bell.
No surprises for the Buffalo Bills in this round of cuts
In this initial round of cuts there weren’t many surprises as all five players were likely long shots to make the Buffalo Bills 53-man roster. Of the three offensive linemen, two of them (Harrell and Benenoch) were signed during training camp. The Bills were dealing with a number of injuries on the offensive line but are starting to get healthy so making a majority of their cuts at this position makes sense.
If there is one move that could be considered a surprise, it would certainly have to be linebacker Mike Bell. The Bills brought Bell this offseason for a third straight year but he has yet to make it onto the active roster. In addition to that, Bell actually played well on Friday night against the Detroit Lions. He would finish the game with three total tackles and a sack.
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However, the Buffalo Bills do have great depth at linebacker and Mike Bell was a long shot to make the roster with the players they have. The Bills will have another deadline next Tuesday, August 24th, to cut the roster down to 80 players before the final roster cutdown on August 31st where they must get to 53 players.